


Shaping a Vessel

by Laylah



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Dark Magic, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He feels the presence of the Dark as possibility, like the moment on a battlefield before the charge first begins, or as a strange sense of companionship, as if he has an ally at his back, just out of sight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shaping a Vessel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).



In the days following Bardorba's death, Ashley finds himself restless, unable to get comfortable behind the walls of any city of men. The Inquisition has no hope of tracking him down, no way to confront him; when he conceals himself behind another's shape, the rank and file don't find any cause for alarm, and the more magick-adept witch hunters are easy to avoid. Perhaps the Dark would confound them, too, should they come close enough to sense something amiss.

He's still learning how to deal with the presence of the Dark, the way it haunts his senses wherever he goes: it brings a strange depth to his surroundings, as if before the world around him had been a series of flat paintings, and only now can he see the true shapes of things. He feels the presence of the Dark as possibility, like the moment on a battlefield before the charge first begins, or as a strange sense of companionship, as if he has an ally at his back, just out of sight. There's power there, and plenty of it, but Ashley still has little idea what to do with it. He wishes, occasionally, that Sydney were around to give him instruction—and _that_ thought brings with it an echo of Sydney's laughter, whispering to him from the Dark.

The restlessness grows as the days go by, and Ashley finds himself sleeping later in the mornings, avoiding the bright sun of midday. His behavior will mark him as suspicious even if his powers are well hidden. So he leaves the comforts of the town where he'd taken rest, and walks out into the Greylands with only his weapons and the Rood on his back.

It was the right choice, he knows almost at once; he can feel it in his blood, thrumming in the sinews that bind muscle to bone. He carries the Dark with him now, and the Dark does not easily suffer containment. He could always see well in the dark, but now he moves with the aid of the Dark itself, and when he sleeps through days and travels through nights it feels comfortable, easy. There are wolves running wild through the marches, and Ashley runs with them; on warm nights there are bats taking wing from the ruins Ashley haunts, and if he fixes his mind on them he can feel the way the air speeds beneath their wings. And always, at the edge of his perception, that sense of the Dark as a comrade, wry and teasing.

After a few days of traveling alone, away from the settlements of mortal men, Ashley begins to have strange dreams. They are not the nightmares that haunted his fitful snatches of sleep in Lea Monde itself, the visions of a family that may have been his and the violent end that he may have brought them. It seems he left that guilt in the ruined city, indecipherable as any of its secrets. Instead they're dreams of the Dark itself, sensual and strange, muddled impressions of deep, rich colors and feral, earthy scents.

It's no mere figure of flowery speech that the Church treats the Dark as a wilful adversary; in Ashley's dreams he can feel the desire behind it, the sense of a presence that welcomes him to share in its vision, its strength. There are vivid shades of color in the Dark, rust and burgundy and heady, dark violet; there are scents of crisp cold air and animal hunger along with the wet stone he remembers from the catacombs. And there is lust, the echo of flesh on flesh, the wet warmth of a welcoming mouth, the teasing scrape of teeth and the ghost-faint touch of claws.

Ashley wakes to the tail end of dusk, the last gold and crimson fire disappearing over the treetops to the west. The presence of the Dark is so heavy in the air around him that he can taste it. What is it waiting for? What does it want from him?

 _Ask yourself rather what you want from the Dark, Riskbreaker_ , he hears, cool and amused. _You'll find the answer far more profitable._

"Sydney?" Ashley says, sitting up straight, looking around him in the gloom. That isn't possible and he knows it well, and yet—

 _What is the purpose of the Dark, if not to change the bounds of what is possible?_

"You're reading my mind," Ashley growls. The hair stands up on the back of his neck, and he restrains the urge to reach for a sword.

Sydney's phantom voice laughs. _Still looking for simple answers, after all you've seen. As if the Dark is a canker you could cut away with your blade. If you would understand it, much less master its gifts, you'll set aside such crude tactics._

Ashley breathes slowly, not letting himself lash out. "I wanted someone to show me how to handle the Dark," he says. It feels ridiculous, addressing the air, but Sydney seems to be a voice only, not even a shade. "Is that why you've come here?"

 _Better_ , Sydney purrs. _You wanted. Any student of magick will tell you that matters at least as much as any incantation._ A feather-light breeze brushes the back of Ashley's neck, and he spins around, finding only empty air and crumbling ruins behind him. _What else do you want?_

"I want to be able to see you," he says. Even in death, Sydney is still leading him around by the nose.

 _Do you?_ Sydney asks. _Convince the Dark, then. Let it feel what you want._

This seems strangely hazy to Ashley. Combat is a matter of direct, certain movements, learned and practiced to make best use of the blade's weight and shape; he'd gotten the impression that magick required equal precision, knowing spells and casting circles.

But the Dark, perhaps, is less tame than the magicks other sorcerers use; he can feel the way it watches him, the way it...waits for him, even now. He pictures Sydney in his mind, lithe and lean, pale, fey, with the terrible beauty of his silver claws. He forces the image to come clear in his mind, to sharpen into focus—and it's all too easy to provide the _want_ that Sydney claims the Dark will understand. Sydney is—was—strikingly beautiful, aggressively so, as if he would make it a challenge; Ashley did his best to ignore the fact when Sydney was his adversary, but now, especially coming off the lush indulgence of those dreams....

Sydney's shade takes form among the fallen stones, moon-pale and beautiful, lip curled in wicked amusement. "You're a natural, Riskbreaker," he says. He turns slowly, holding up his clawed hands as if he's admiring them himself. "Satisfied now?"

He turns far enough for Ashley to see his back, and despite all of Ashley's experience in battle the sight makes him flinch. The Rood burns on his own back, as if it remembers belonging there, where Sydney's skin has been cut and peeled away. "No," Ashley says. "I'm not satisfied." He swallows against the discomfort of looking too closely. "Can the Dark be used for healing in the same way?"

Sydney glances back at him over the elegant line of his bare shoulder. "Try."

It feels natural to reach out, to direct his will with motion; this time Ashley can feel the Dark responding to him, a prickle of cool energy over his skin, a tang of power on the back of his tongue. He watches Sydney's mutilated back heal itself, skin smoothing gently over the raw muscle beneath, until he's looking at a clean, unbroken whole.

"Who would have thought a killer would have such gentleness about him?" Sydney murmurs, turning gracefully to meet Ashley's eyes. He looks so close to real—not faded to stone gray like Lea Monde's apparitions were, though truth be told Sydney has barely more color to him than that at the best of times. Still, he looks solid, present; Ashley reaches out curiously to touch.

His fingers still slip through Sydney's phantom shape, and he shivers at the chill air. He can feel the presence of the Dark concentrated there, in Sydney's form; what unsettles him is that he can't tell if that's all he feels. Should Sydney seem to be anything _else_? After all the years he spent serving the Dark, and after his death and transformation to a shade?

"Still you want more," Sydney says, the tips of his claws trailing over the back of Ashley's arm. "Now you would touch?"

Ashley shakes his head in disbelief. "Would you have me restore you one sense at a time, then?"

Sydney's smile promises an entire world of unholy delights, and the hand curved elegantly around his hip accentuates the offer. "Only if you need to go so slowly," he says.

This is an unforgivable heresy, and Ashley finds that thought troubles him surprisingly little. He reaches out to Sydney again, this time imagining the feel of Sydney's skin under his fingertips. For a moment he hesitates: would Sydney feel warm to the touch? Cool as the marble statue he resembles? Chilled from baring his skin to the night air, but able to be warmed like a mortal man?

Cool, Ashley thinks, though not so cold as the silver of his clawed arms. Supple and smooth, with the strength of lean muscle obvious beneath the skin: Sydney is slender and fair, but he is capable with blades as well as spells. The power of the Dark seethes in the air around them, coils through Ashley's outstretched arm, and this time his hand finds flesh, just as he imagined it. He draws a deep breath.

Sydney should smell of leather, of exotic smoke, of warm human musk and cool Dark magick; Ashley isn't certain if that's something he remembers or something he imagines, but when he takes another breath it has become the truth either way. "Small wonder the Dark has seduced so many," he says. "It offers the impossible."

"Most people imagine the realm of the possible to be far smaller than it is," Sydney answers. He reaches up to rest a cool hand on Ashley's shoulder, claw-points resting delicately against skin. "It makes them easy to seduce." He tips his head back, licking his lips. Ashley thinks of the rumors of Sydney's charisma, remembers how deeply devoted all of his cultists were—and leans down to accept the offered kiss.

Sydney's mouth tastes of spices, sweeter than he has any right to, and there is something of the Dark's tang on his tongue. It feels for all the world like a real kiss, like he is a real man. Ashley has always been taught that there is no way to call back the dead to this life, and even in Lea Monde, the Dark could make fallen bodies rise but could not restore their souls to truly inhabit them. And yet—Sydney was steeped in the Dark for years, gave himself over to it more thoroughly than any other man has done. Might it not have kept hold of him when his earthly vessel finally perished? Is that, too, within Sydney's extended realm of what is possible?

Ashley pulls back to look Sydney in the eyes, to try to divine some answers there. "The Dark responds to what I want," he says. "But magick is the art of deception and illusion as often as not. You could still be a homunculus created from my imagination, and not the true man at all."

"A philosopher as well as a Riskbreaker," Sydney says, pressing himself closer with a wicked smile. "You will bear the Rood well."

Ashley's exasperation is swallowed in the needy heat of another kiss, and he thinks perhaps he was wrong to describe Sydney as _true_ in the first place. Sydney was ever a riddle, and perhaps never quite mortal to begin with. Ashley settles his hands around the narrow waist he imagined, the heels of his palms resting over the arches of Sydney's hip bones, and resolves to learn from this impossibility all he can.


End file.
